Which IDE to put drives on?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jethro
  • Start date Start date
J

Jethro

My friend tells me he has read repeatedly that one should always keep
hard drives on the Primary IDE and any optical drives on Secondary,
and not mix the two on the same IDE channel.

I have never read that.

Is that so?

Jethro
 
Jethro said:
My friend tells me he has read repeatedly that one should always
keep hard drives on the Primary IDE and any optical drives on
Secondary, and not mix the two on the same IDE channel.
Click to expand...

That is pig ignorant 'advice' that no longer makes any sense at all.
I have never read that.
Click to expand...
Is that so?
Click to expand...

Nope.
 
My friend tells me he has read repeatedly that one should always keep
hard drives on the Primary IDE and any optical drives on Secondary,
and not mix the two on the same IDE channel.

I have never read that.

Is that so?
Click to expand...


Not necessarily. It often happens because you have a larger
rack up top and a smaller on the bottom, making it the only
reasonable (or even possible, if one adheres to the 18"
limit for PATA cabling) way to do it.

IDT, independent device timing, allows each drive to operate
at it's max speed, and has been a standard feature of any PC
motherboard chipset for the last decade or more. There can
be a minor performance hit having any ATAPI (like an optical
drive) device on the same channel as a hard drive, but it is
mostly trivial, as significant might be that if you are
accessing the optical drive, it may increase latency while
waiting for the slower transfer to complete.

In other words, PATA allows only one drive per cable access
at any moment, so any two devices which need max performance
for simultaneous I/O should be on opposing cables. Keeping
the cable routing issues mentioned above in mind, it is
often that the opticals (if two are present) are still put
on the 2nd cable and this is only changed if there is a
performance issue, I mean problem with the throughput in
particular uses.
 
Not necessarily. It often happens because you have a larger
rack up top and a smaller on the bottom, making it the only
reasonable (or even possible, if one adheres to the 18"
limit for PATA cabling) way to do it.

IDT, independent device timing, allows each drive to operate
at it's max speed, and has been a standard feature of any PC
motherboard chipset for the last decade or more. There can
be a minor performance hit having any ATAPI (like an optical
drive) device on the same channel as a hard drive, but it is
mostly trivial, as significant might be that if you are
accessing the optical drive, it may increase latency while
waiting for the slower transfer to complete.

In other words, PATA allows only one drive per cable access
at any moment, so any two devices which need max performance
for simultaneous I/O should be on opposing cables. Keeping
the cable routing issues mentioned above in mind, it is
often that the opticals (if two are present) are still put
on the 2nd cable and this is only changed if there is a
performance issue, I mean problem with the throughput in
particular uses.
Click to expand...

Thanks

Jethro
 
Jethro said:
My friend tells me he has read repeatedly that one should always keep
hard drives on the Primary IDE and any optical drives on Secondary,
and not mix the two on the same IDE channel.

I have never read that.

Is that so?

Jethro
Click to expand...

It used to be that putting a CDOM (ATA33) on the same cable as a HDD (ATA66
or higher) would slow the the HDD down by forcing the same speed on both
devices (ATA33) but that doesnt apply anymore unless you have 'really' old
hardware.

If you still use IDE and not SATA a good configuration for muliple HDDs is
one on each IDE cable as Master and an Optical drive as Slave. This is
because only one device per cable is accessed at any time so if you copy
data between the HDDs (backing up data etc) it works quicker with them on
separate cables. Also you can have Windows, Applications and Games on the C
drive and the Swapfile/Pagefile on the D drive (along with data storage and
backup files) - this is how I work and it reduces the lag you experience
whenever the pagefile is accessed.
 
Not necessarily. It often happens because you have a larger
rack up top and a smaller on the bottom, making it the only
reasonable (or even possible, if one adheres to the 18"
limit for PATA cabling) way to do it.

IDT, independent device timing, allows each drive to operate
at it's max speed, and has been a standard feature of any PC
motherboard chipset for the last decade or more. There can
be a minor performance hit having any ATAPI (like an optical
drive) device on the same channel as a hard drive, but it is
mostly trivial, as significant might be that if you are
accessing the optical drive, it may increase latency while
waiting for the slower transfer to complete.

In other words, PATA allows only one drive per cable access
at any moment, so any two devices which need max performance
for simultaneous I/O should be on opposing cables. Keeping
the cable routing issues mentioned above in mind, it is
often that the opticals (if two are present) are still put
on the 2nd cable and this is only changed if there is a
performance issue, I mean problem with the throughput in
particular uses.
Click to expand...


Thanks Kony

All this is in reference to my earlier posts re: instability.

I had configured my drives thus:

Primary Master - Seagate Barracuda 120GB ST31200026A
Primary Slave - TSST CORP DVDW TS
Secondary Master - WDC WD1600JB-00GVC0
Secondary Slave - MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0

As I stated, I am now having trouble with the Secondary Slave drive.
I have now tried this configuration and have the same trouble with the
same HDD:

Primary Master - Seagate Barracuda 120GB ST31200026A
Primary Slave - MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0
Secondary Master - TSST CORP DVDW TS
Secondary Slave - WDC WD1600JB-00GVC0

I have another spare HDD WDC 1200BB (120gb), so I substituted it for
the MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0 in the above configuration. I no longer have
a problem. So I think the 60GB HDD should be shelved.

Thanks

I hope this ends it.

Jethro
 
It used to be that putting a CDOM (ATA33) on the same cable as a HDD (ATA66
or higher) would slow the the HDD down by forcing the same speed on both
devices (ATA33) but that doesnt apply anymore unless you have 'really' old
hardware.

If you still use IDE and not SATA a good configuration for muliple HDDs is
one on each IDE cable as Master and an Optical drive as Slave. This is
because only one device per cable is accessed at any time so if you copy
data between the HDDs (backing up data etc) it works quicker with them on
separate cables. Also you can have Windows, Applications and Games on the C
drive and the Swapfile/Pagefile on the D drive (along with data storage and
backup files) - this is how I work and it reduces the lag you experience
whenever the pagefile is accessed.
Click to expand...

What he said :)
 
kony said:
Not necessarily. It often happens because you have a larger
rack up top and a smaller on the bottom, making it the only
reasonable (or even possible, if one adheres to the 18"
limit for PATA cabling) way to do it.

IDT, independent device timing, allows each drive to operate
at it's max speed, and has been a standard feature of any PC
motherboard chipset for the last decade or more. There can
be a minor performance hit having any ATAPI (like an optical
drive) device on the same channel as a hard drive, but it is
mostly trivial, as significant might be that if you are
accessing the optical drive, it may increase latency while
waiting for the slower transfer to complete.

In other words, PATA allows only one drive per cable access
at any moment, so any two devices which need max performance
for simultaneous I/O should be on opposing cables.
Click to expand...

In practice you get very little true simultaneous IO in personal desktop systems.
 
Yes that is so. The harddrives operate at a much higher data speed, and so
hooking an optical drive AND a harddrive on the same IDE channel will limit
the speed of the harddrive on each IDE channel.
 
DaveW said:
Yes that is so. The harddrives operate at a much higher data speed,
and so hooking an optical drive AND a harddrive on the same IDE
channel will limit the speed of the harddrive on each IDE channel.
Click to expand...

Not a ****ing clue, as always.
 
Thanks Kony

All this is in reference to my earlier posts re: instability.

I had configured my drives thus:

Primary Master - Seagate Barracuda 120GB ST31200026A
Primary Slave - TSST CORP DVDW TS
Secondary Master - WDC WD1600JB-00GVC0
Secondary Slave - MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0

As I stated, I am now having trouble with the Secondary Slave drive.
I have now tried this configuration and have the same trouble with the
same HDD:

Primary Master - Seagate Barracuda 120GB ST31200026A
Primary Slave - MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0
Secondary Master - TSST CORP DVDW TS
Secondary Slave - WDC WD1600JB-00GVC0

I have another spare HDD WDC 1200BB (120gb), so I substituted it for
the MAXTOR 60GB 6Y060L0 in the above configuration. I no longer have
a problem. So I think the 60GB HDD should be shelved.
Click to expand...


Yes, the positions of the drives should not cause
instability, if a drive weren't being detected it might be a
jumpering issue but it would seem the drive is just bad.
 
In practice you get very little true simultaneous IO in personal desktop systems.
Click to expand...

True, but if you don't mention it then someone is bound to
come along and say "but...".
 
kony said:
True, but if you don't mention it then someone is bound to
come along and say "but...".
Click to expand...

You'd be better off mentioning the lack of true simultaneous IO too.
 
Yes, the positions of the drives should not cause
instability, if a drive weren't being detected it might be a
jumpering issue but it would seem the drive is just bad.
Click to expand...

Thanks

The drive is shelved.

Jethro
 
Back
Top